Watch A-Haunting We Will Go For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

The Worst Film Ever

Good concept, poorly executed.

Best movie ever!

*Spoiler/plot- A Haunting We Will Go, 1942, 'The Boys' get innocently involved with some crooks and con-men. They have to get 'out of town' and do it while escorting a coffin to another town by rail for money. This job becomes a shady way a gang of crooks take advantage of the new townspeople with another 'con'.*Special Stars- Laurel and Hardy, Dick Lane, Elisha Cook Jr. "Dante the Magician".*Theme- Spooky things happen around stage magicians and crooks.*Trivia/location/goofs- Dante the Magician was doing street magic and got cast in this film. This Columbia Studios film was one that was considered a 'lesser' Larual and Hardy comedy due to not be made at Hal Roach Studios.*Emotion- A quite different film due to its director's serious premise of this being a mystery film instead of a Laurel and Hardy comedy. It lacks some of the classic comedy plot and on camera antics because the writers didn't know what worked for this great comedy duo. Still good to enjoy.

Laurel and Hardy are bamboozled into smuggling a gangster, disguised as a corpse in a coffin, from one city to another but complications arise when the coffin is switched with a coffin used in a magician's act. This film, produced by Twentieth Century Fox, doesn't approach the charm of even their weakest feature produced by the Hal Roach Studios, but I don't think this is necessarily Laurel and Hardy's worst film. There are a few laughs, sporadic as they may be. The main problem is that the comedy is too generic, it doesn't grow out of the personas they painstaking developed over the years. One could just as easily imagine Abbott and Costello or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby doing the Indian Rope trick gag. The production values are better than the Roach films, but production value is a poor substitute for comedy. The predicament can be summed up in the casting. In this film the boys are menaced by Elisha Cook, Jr.. Don't get me wrong. I think Elisha Cook, Jr., is an terrific supporting actor, but against Humphrey Bogart, not Laurel and Hardy. The boys are better menaced by a comic heavy like Walter Long.Still, although many Laurel and Hardy fans castigate Fox and MGM for their treatment of the duo during the 1940s, I don't honestly see how it could have been much different anywhere in Hollywood. Laurel and Hardy were products of the 1920s and 1930s, the golden age of screen comedy. The 1940s were the nadir of comedy. By the time "A Haunting We Will Go" hit the screens in 1942, all of the greats were all essentially gone. Chaplin was inactive, and never returned to the comedy which made him great. Harold Lloyd had retired. Buster Keaton's career was in ruins. W.C. Fields' career was over. The Marx Brothers' film career was essentially over. Even the Ritz Brothers only had two more films in them. When you look at Laurel and Hardy in the context of their peers, it is a great testimony to their popularity that their film career continued as long as it did. The 1940s would forever belong to Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope, the likes of whom would make some funny films, but decade never had the comic vitality of the 1930s.

....Flaunting their lack of interest in the project that is!Whether it is L A H's poorest cinematic moment or not is quite immaterial, it is crappy entertainment any which way you cut it. One reviewer nailed it. Here we have Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy the actors....NOT their beloved characters. They were arguably past their prime here and it shows, if nothing else, in their disinterest and discomfort. A couple of amusing moments do not justify the 68 minute run time. I will not belabor the plotline again..others have done that.It pains me to bag ANY L & H pic but regrettably this effort is deserving of little else. I recall watching it first as a child in 1954 at Saturday morning pictures. Even THEN it was held up as one of the worst we'd seen in several weeks. When I saw it again twenty seven years later nothing had happened to alter my opinion. About time for the next quarter of a century review....I fear the worst!

For many years,both ATOLL K(1951)and THE BIG NOISE(1944)had reputations for being Laurel & Hardy's worst film;amongst film scholars and L & H buffs like myself,this film has definitely taken over that mantle in recent years. So why is A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO so dismal? Firstly,Laurel & Hardy the actors are not allowed to play Laurel & Hardy the characters throughout.Namely,the naive,likeable innocents they established at the Hal Roach studios are virtually non-existent;they are forced to play irritating,doltish nit-wits who we are not called to sympathise with;the exact reverse philosophy as was with their Roach films. Secondly,Fox saddles them with a tenth-rate gangster melodrama in which they would've been better off not appearing in;much of the dialogue is straight,unfunny exposition with supporting characters that are far too tough and nasty to be funny. Thirdly,Alfred Werker,a solid director of melodramas,is totally out of his depth with comedy,and it shows up starkly in this film. And finally,the title is misleading;haunting has nothing to do with the plot,and nothing of it's description turns up in the film. The only mildly amusing moments occur within a train sequence featuring Dante the magician(who easily gives the film's most assured performance);Stan & Ollie,though,look embarrassed and bored with the film's content;as they should be.It's my candidate for their worst film,and many others are beginning to agree.3 out of 10.